Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [292]
But compared with its bustle when the place was exporting nuclear deterrence, it might as well have been deserted. Its sinister emptiness recalled the public squares of the old Communist capitals. I set off across the concourse with the nervous hesitation one feels on entering a large, old, and possibly unoccupied house.
I had no idea what to do next. If Myra had wanted to tell me, I’d assumed she would and could; if she’d had any warnings, she’d have included them in the message. As it stood it appeared that the only aspect of our contact which she wanted to keep secret was that she needed my help.
The coffee franchise was still there, and open. It was where she’d met us before. I walked over and ordered a coffee and sat down with it and a copy of the English-language edition of Kapitsa Pravda, which lived up to its name in that it gave an apparently truthful account of the news. I had reached the sports pages before I realised that it contained no news whatsoever about Kapitsa.
I scanned the concourse, eagerly fixing on any figure who chanced to resemble my memory of Myra, and sat back disappointed each time. An hour passed. Mutual Protection guards wandered through as if they owned the place. More people came and went. I heard one, then two more aircraft come in. Their passengers straggled individually or in small knots to the glass doors, outside which a dozen taxis idled their engines in the cold.
Maybe I should just look her up in the phone-book…I was standing at the booth and gazing at the search page before I realised that I didn’t know her current surname. It even took me several seconds of racking my memory before her original surname came back to me: Godwin. I tried that. No luck.
I put an encrypted call through to Annette.
‘Hi, love. I’ve arrived safely.’
She smiled. ‘Glad to hear it. That’s not why you’ve called.’
‘Why d’you say that?’
‘I know how your mind works, Jon.’ She laughed. ‘It’s Davidov. I looked it up on the old insurance policy.’
I suppose I must have looked embarrassed. Annette grinned and stuck out her tongue, a pink millimetre on the tiny screen. ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘Take care.’
The screen blinked off. I sighed, suddenly feeling very old and alone, and keyed up the phone-book again.
Davidov, Myra G., Lieut-Cmmdr (ret’d) lived at Flat 36, Block 7, Ignace Reiss Boulevard. No other Davidov was listed at that address; Myra’s marriage had broken up years ago. The building, when the taxi dropped me off there, turned out to be a classic Soviet block, recently built in a kind of perverted homage to the workers’ motherland but with its concrete already crumbling and discoloured. Only one car was parked outside, a big black Skoda Traverser. Myra’s, I guessed: it looked just the sort of vehicle that would be at the disposal of a retired People’s Commissar.
The lift, in another neat touch of authenticity, didn’t work. I lugged my travel-bag up three flights of stairs. My knees hurt. Time I got a new set of joints. I rang the doorbell and looked around for a CCTV camera. There wasn’t one. Instead, a shutter flicked back, exposing a fisheye lens sunk into the door. Bolts squeaked, chains rattled. The door opened slowly. Yellow light, heavy scent, stale cigarette-smoke and loud music escaped. Then a hand reached out and tugged me inside. The door swung and clicked behind me, and I was caught in a warm and bony embrace.
After a minute we stood back, hands on each other’s shoulders.
‘Well, hi,’ Myra said.
Her steel-grey bobbed hair matched the gunmetal satin of her pyjama-suit. Her face had the waxy, dead-Lenin sheen imparted by post-Soviet rejuvenation technology, a glaring contrast to the mottled and ropy skin of her hands. Like me, like all of the New Old, she was a chimera of youth and age.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘You’re looking well.’
She laughed. ‘You aren’t.’ Her fingertips rasped the stubble on my cheek.
‘Nothing